When First Lieutenant Charles Schneider shipped over to the European Theater of Operations (ETO) in the fall of 1944, he expected to see his share of blood and guts. But in the normal course of events he had every expectation of returning home at war’s end wearing both his dog tags.

Schneider was a medical doctor with the 189th General Hospital, and in most instances general hospitals were well behind the lines, threatened only by an occasional stray bomb. Schneider could look forward to long hours, backbreaking fatigue, stress and distress, but not life-threatening danger.

Things often don’t work out as planned, however, especially during a war. Instead of having a cozy niche with the 189th General, Schneider wound up as a battalion surgeon with the 80th Infantry Division, as the replacement for a doctor who had had a combat-induced nervous breakdown. In that capacity, he saw plenty of war close-up, from the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 to the Allied victory in Europe in May 1945. He would be shelled and shot at, wander into enemy-held territory, and twice–though unarmed–have German troops surrender to him.

In the warm comfort of his Birmingham, Ala., home, the now retired Dr. Schneider recalled what it was like to be bitterly cold and in almost constant danger. Lynn Grisard Fullman transcribed those memories for Military History Magazine.

Military History: How did the wounded arrive?

Schneider: The wounded, including civilians and prisoners of war, were brought in by truck and by trains that ran along a line not far from where the temporary hospital was set up.

MH: What was your duty then?

Schneider: As the medical officers were being assigned duties, no one wanted to do neurosurgery. Because I had recently completed a three-month rotation in neurosurgery at the University of Virginia under the renowned Dr. Gayle Crutchfield, I was handed the job.

MH: What was it like?

Schneider: I had to do the best I could with patients with nervous-system injuries that were pretty nasty. Head injuries were the worst. I cared for a number of POWs (prisoners of war) with severe head and nerve injuries. Most of them were kept in a single tent that held 25 to 30 neurosurgical patients.

MH: Were any of the injured moved?

Schneider: The bad neurosurgical American casualties were rather rapidly transported across the Channel to British hospitals. But the order had come that POWs could not be moved any farther than the General Hospital Unit in France–so we were doing the best we could. Fortunately, though, we didn’t get the casualty load you get when active battle is going on close by.

MH: Did most of the patients recover?

Schneider: The survival rate wasn’t too good as far as our neurosurgical problems were concerned.

MH: What did you treat most often?

Schneider: The most common injury I treated was one in which the skull had been blasted open and part of the brain was sticking out. It’s called fungus cerebri. Those patients never did well; there just wasn’t much I could do for them.

MH: What was the worst medical problem you saw?

Schneider: It probably was an American soldier who was assigned to a railroad unit. He had been walking on top of a train when it came to a short tunnel, and he didn’t realize how low the clearance was. When we saw him, he had a fracture that went through the skull’s frontal area just above the nose, and he had spinal fluid leaking from his nose. To complicate things, he developed severe meningitis. He was unconscious and had severe rigidity in his back because of spinal canal inflammation caused by pneumococcus meningitis.

MH: Could you do anything for him?

Schneider: Actually, yes. I’d read about a new drug, and we were getting it in small quantities from the United States. I didn’t know if it would work, but I treated him, and within 24 to 36 hours he was conscious and recovering. The new drug was penicillin.

MH: What do you remember about the start of the Battle of the Bulge?

Schneider: The German counteroffensive began on December 16, 1944, not long after I arrived in France. The Germans crashed through our lines at the most unexpected place and time. It was in the dead of winter, the weather was horrible, snow was all over the ground, and they just blew through our lines like a dose of salts.

MH: How did the battle affect you?

Schneider: I remember, right before Christmas, being called to the tent of the hospital unit’s commanding officer (CO), who told me I would leave the next morning. He explained that the command had come down to all the medical units, requiring them to send every general duty medical officer to a combat unit.

MH: How much notice did you receive?

Schneider: Just one night. My CO told me that the next morning I would go to an airstrip where I would board a Douglas C-47 transport plane that would take me to Paris, then to my new unit.

MH: Was there time for goodbyes?

Schneider: That night I had to get my duffel bag packed, but first I went back by the tent where I had patients, many of them Germans, who told me to come back later that night. They had been planning to give me a little something for Christmas, so they went ahead and gave me a program of singing and a plaque one of the German prisoners had carved using a pen knife and a piece of wood taken from a packing case. All these years, I’ve kept that tiny plaque on my office wall. It shows a woman looking through a window at the shining star of Bethlehem; and in the bottom corner, it says, simply, ‘Weihnachten 1944.” Weihnachten means Christmas in German.

MH: Where did you go next?

Schneider: After spending a few days in Paris, I took the train from Paris to Metz, where the rear command of the 80th Infantry Division of the Third Army was located. I was to join the 80th Division to replace a medical officer.

MH: How was it when you arrived?

Schneider: Under blackout precautions, I got to the railroad station and stood in the cold and snow until finally a sergeant loomed out of the blackness and said he would take me to headquarters. The next morning, another fellow and I got in a staff car and headed to Luxembourg City. The main road from Metz was jammed with Third Army armored vehicles. Fortunately, we were riding in a 4-wheel-drive staff car, and the driver would take the car off the road. We’d slosh through the fields and snow while all around us the tanks were slipping and sliding off the road. By the time we reached Luxembourg, it was the middle of the night–right in the middle of a German air raid. It was so dark, all you could see were flashes of anti-aircraft fire.

MH: Other than that, how was your welcome?

Schneider: When I got to the forward headquarters, they said, We’ve been waiting for you.” It seems the medical officer I was relieving had already been taken away. He was a mental casualty, and I think he ended up cutting out paper dolls somewhere. I was dead tired. It was dark, and all I wanted right then was to sleep, but they told me that an ambulance was going to take me to the collecting station. We had to travel at night because it was just too dangerous to move about in the daylight.

MH: And the ambulance ride?

Schneider: This bearded character drove the ambulance, which had no full headlights, only cat eyes (blackout lights), so only a little bit of light could leak through. Everything was covered with snow. We traveled several hours that night, heading north out of Luxembourg City. I started hearing shellfire; then there was a really loud boom. The driver said, That’s all right, that’s going out.” I didn’t know what he meant until we came to a point where he stopped in the woods. When I asked why we were stopping, he told me to watch the intersection up ahead, about 500 yards. You wait and you’ll see,” he said. Then, all of a sudden we heard crack, crack, crack! Now that,” he said, is coming in!” Then he put the jeep into gear. My God, don’t go up there,” I pleaded, but he explained that what we’d just heard was interdictory fire, Germans firing at the crossroad at intervals. You don’t want to be there when they fire, but once they’ve fired, you scoot across.

MH: Then what happened?

Schneider: I had orders to be the battalion surgeon for the 905th Field Artillery Battalion, attached to the 80th Division. I stayed with them until war’s end. They were deployed in the mountains to support infantry units. That area was the U.S. spearhead into the base of the German offensive. We received fire from three different directions and had to watch out for our own artillery fire.

MH: For a doctor like yourself, was it very dangerous?

Schneider: My work wasn’t as dangerous as it would have been with an infantry battalion. Our field artillery consisted of 105mm howitzers. Our battalion had a mortar company of 4.2-inch mortars attached to it. As the medical officer, I was responsible for the care of battalion personnel as well as the attached unit–wounds, frozen feet, illness and the like. If anyone was hurt too badly, I would make arrangements for their evacuation to a medical unit.

MH: How did you establish a place to care for patients?

Schneider: As the medical officer, I had to go ahead of the unit and set up a forward aid station. That’s when I always got into trouble. I remember one time when I was responsible for a 4.2 mortar company. It was behind a hill shooting at the enemy, and I had a heck of a time finding it. I took my driver and jeep and headed in the direction we thought they were. We came to this little town named Gholsdorf, where we were supposed to have advance units. I found only one man, a forward artillery observer who was in a church steeple, and he suggested the road I should take. Figuring he knew what he was talking about, I took the road toward Buckholz, a town on the ridge of a mountain. That day, everything was covered with snow, and it was quiet. So off we headed down a little road that went up over a rise, then started down again. All of a sudden, out from behind a small knoll came a huge German Tiger tank, headed straight for us. There was a red cross on the jeep and my helmet, but in this war, there were no immunities and we knew it. The tank pointed its 88mm cannon at us, and I stood up with my hands above my head. About that time, the German in the tank called to us, in German, Where are you going?” Fortunately, because I had studied German in school and had spent a summer in Germany, I could talk to him, and I think that may have saved my life. As the cannon aimed straight at my face, I managed to explain that I was looking for my unit. They aren’t up here, and you’d better get out of here fast,” he told me. I thanked him, then told the driver to get the hell out of there. He whipped that jeep around and we sped away.

MH: Were any other Americans around?

Schneider: As we were going back, we saw something move on the side of the road and there in a foxhole was a GI, peering out and wearing a helmet camouflaged with white. He explained that he was the forward observer for his infantry company and that the area where I’d been had not yet been taken. I told him about the Tiger tank around the curve and he said, Yeah, we’ve been having some tanks up there, and I’ve been staying in my hole.” I got back to town and went to the observer I had talked to earlier in the church steeple. When he heard what we had run into, he said we’d been lucky. Later, I heard that the unit that was supposed to take the next town had one jeep of infantrymen go up that road, and, right where I had been, they were hit by an 88mm shell. It killed them all just a couple of hours after I had been there.

MH: Did you find your company?

Schneider: I found my mortar company defiladed behind a steep hill, intermittently firing 4.2 mortars. Right after I got there, while talking to a lieutenant, we heard a thump on top of the hill and saw something plowing through the snow. Duck,” he warned me. It was a German mortar shell that hadn’t exploded because the hill was so steep. We dove into a foxhole, and that thing went slithering by, swish, right through the snow, but it didn’t explode.

MH: Were the Germans accurate shots?

Schneider: The Germans were very good with mortars. I remember once when they had knocked out a bridge that was our only way to advance. At night, an engineering company threw a plank bridge across the ravine. After it was across, the first thing we did was to put a tank destroyer across the bridge to protect it. The guy protecting the bridge had his hatch open, and doggone if the Germans didn’t lob a mortar shell right down that hatch. I wasn’t there, but I saw the destroyed gun when I came through.

MH: Did you ever see another Tiger tank?

Schneider: Believe it not, yes. After the Bulge was pushed back, I was going to check on a unit and got on a wrong road. We were traveling a winding, narrow dirt track when I turned and saw a Tiger. The tank commander, who was probably as surprised as I was, turned that big gun at me and asked what I was doing. I told him that I was lost and that I was a doctor. Probably skeptical of my answers, he came right over to us and searched the jeep while another man kept a gun pointed at me. When he saw we had no weapons, he allowed us to leave.

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